by Frey Ortega
“Yeah. I mean, you were there when we first started this relationship, Elijah,” Eos said. “You know what kind of things we had to do to make this work. I had to adjust to the idea that vampires were real, and, well…he had to find a space for me in his life. That’s just the half of it, too.”
Elijah nodded. “I remember. I was there,” he replied. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but a little part of me seriously wonders now if me and Bennett are going to be the same way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, by the way, it’s just that…I don’t know. I guess I had this idea of what mating was going to be for myself.”
“I think it’s normal to have expectations about these things,” Julien said. “I certainly thought about my own mating back when I didn’t even know Eos yet. The thing is, making room for someone—anyone, really—in your life is going to take work, and a lot of patience. The only reason a lot of us do the heavy lifting to make room for our mates in our lives is because we know with absolute certainty that they’re the ones for us. Humans don’t have that luxury.”
Elijah, once again, sighed. He leaned back on the chair, and he scratched the back of his head out of sheer irritation. “I was afraid of that,” he muttered. “Patience isn’t really my strongest suit.”
“I think we’re well aware of that at this point,” Eos said, smiling. “But if he really is your mate, he’ll be able to accept you as you are.”
Julien nodded. “Yeah. The one that completes you. Feeling the sun on your skin is just a nice little bonus to the partnership and the feeling whole and loved. For what it’s worth, I still have to apologize to Eos for turning his schedule around. Even now, we’re all still nocturnal.”
Eos shrugged. “Please. I stay up late every day, anyway and sleep through the morning. It’s what people who work from home do all the time.”
“Okay, well, before you make googly eyes at each other again,” Elijah chimed in, cutting between the two who were definitely smiling at each other and about to go back into their own world. “I need to go talk to Bennett and straighten things out. Maybe apologize, even if I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“You don’t need to apologize. Maybe you just need to hear him out. But I think we might be able to help you in finding him, actually,” Eos said. “We could text Miss Ifi and ask if she knows where he might be.”
Elijah shook his head. “No, I think I’d rather try to find him on my own. I don’t think he left the building.”
“Well, trust your gut, I suppose,” Eos said. “Just try to take things slow. He’ll appreciate it. And when he sees that you want to be there for him, I think he’ll come around.”
Elijah didn’t know for sure if that was going to be true, but he wanted to believe that it was.
Right now, it was all he had.
That, and the feeling that Bennett was actually nearby, and that the two of them really needed to talk this through.
Chapter Five
It was those eyes—those bright, crimson, blood-colored, animal-like eyes—that shook Bennett.
They were the eyes of a monster.
They were in his mind and in his nightmares constantly.
Marcel had irreparably broken a part of him.
Even though Bennett knew the eyes in his dreams weren’t Elijah’s, they all looked the same to him.
An emotionally volatile vampire was a dangerous vampire.
It was that mantra that kept Bennett alive for all the time he spent with Marcel. He knew not to mess with the man, but when Marcel was highly emotional, that was a signal for Bennett to shut up and do as he was told so that he wouldn’t be turned into a warlock pin cushion, bitten over and over and drained.
Bennett curled up in the corner of his bed, in the safety of his room, taking deep breaths.
There was a completely rational side of Bennett’s brain telling him that if Elijah was being truthful, then the vampire wouldn’t hurt his own mate. Vampires treated mating like a sacred bond—it was deeper than the piece of paper humans used to bind themselves to each other—and it was as important to a vampire as breathing.
But then there was this darker side of Bennett that told him to let his emotions simmer away in this bubbling vat of terribleness. It was the side of Bennett that saw those eyes flash crimson, aimed at him, with that deep frown on Elijah’s face, and thought that he was a hair’s breadth away from being left for dead on the sidewalk, the way it had been with Marcel more than a few times.
Okay, calm down. Bennett took a deep breath, trying to push down the mounting panic that threatened to spill out again. You’re safe in here. You’re in your room.
Bennett couldn’t help but think about Elijah, though. Was it true? Was Bennett really Elijah’s mate?
That emotional part of him still couldn’t quite believe it.
“Why me?” Bennett couldn’t help but ask out loud to no one. The room answered him back with silence, only the faintest trace of someone playing music in the other room breaking through his thoughts.
On the other hand, the more logical part of his mind was telling him that vampires didn’t choose their mates. Mating was sacred. It was an unbreakable bond—it meant everything to a vampire, and it wasn’t something to lie about. Not to anyone. Not under any circumstances.
Ever.
So…was it true, then? Was Elijah Lillegard being truthful to him?
“Am I really his mate?” Bennett whispered to himself, not really able to believe the words coming out of his mouth. He looked at the mirror, at his own reflection. Curled up in the corner of his bed, Bennett looked like a mess. He hadn’t even cried tonight. The anxiety had his stomach in knots and it was making him curl up in sadness. He couldn’t believe that just mere weeks after being abducted by that madman, he would find a mate.
But maybe…Maybe it was true.
Maybe Elijah actually was his mate.
Maybe Bennett would have had a real answer if he stayed to talk to Elijah instead of running away and giving in to the voice inside his head telling him to flee. Maybe Bennett wouldn’t have ruined everything completely if he had.
But did you actually ruin anything?
More and more questions started flooding his brain, mostly centered around the believability of Elijah’s claim. It wasn’t that Bennett didn’t believe him, but deep down, Bennett didn’t quite know if he was worthy of all this attention.
But that way of thinking would just make him spiral deeper and deeper into a place that Bennett knew would cause more harm than good. Ripping himself away from that dark and gloomy place, Bennett sighed and laid back on his bed. He stared up at the ceiling, and now all he could think about was how interesting it was—and sad, if he were being honest—that he thought someone like Elijah could lie about being mated to Bennett just because of the young human’s own insecurities. He knew, logically, that it was impossible. That didn’t stop that dark voice in his head from saying otherwise, though.
Honestly, wasn’t the only solution to his problem trying to push his own emotions back—and that dark voice, too—to do the right thing in this situation?
Yeah. I owe it to myself to try, if not Elijah.
Bennett slowly fished for his cellphone out of his pocket. It was a gift from the house mother herself— a way for him to be connected back to the world, she said. It was an older model, in rose gold, and probably had been Ifeya’s own maybe a year or so ago.
But it was pretty, and in excellent condition. It also had everything he needed right at his fingertips.
Bennett slowly scrolled down the screen, and tapped on the name he wanted to talk to. The line didn’t even ring long before it clicked to connect.
“Hello, dear heart. What can I do for you?” Ifeya greeted.
Bennett gulped, trying to push down the butterflies in his stomach. “Hi Miss Ifi, can I ask you something?”
Ifeya chuckled. “Anything at all, Bennett. What is it?”
“Do you maybe have Elijah Lillegard’s number?”
Bennett could hear the smile in Ifeya’s voice as she spoke. “Whatever for?”
The warlock sighed, and tried to find the right words. “I…may have did something to upset him,” Bennett said. “And I don’t know how to contact him to try and apologize.”
“Luckily for you, I know his contact information,” Ifeya replied, clearly still very amused. Bennett imagined she was fighting the urge to chuckle. “Let me end this call and I’ll send you his info, then. It’s refreshing not to need to have to cast a spell or divine something for someone. Just hang on, dearest.”
Click.
Bennett lowered the phone to his lap. The screen had just dimmed when it brightened up with a message—Elijah’s phone number—and a little smiling emoji from Miss Ifi herself that made Bennett smile.
I can talk to him.
But when he opened up the screen for a new message, however, Bennett’s smile faltered. Face-to-face with the ability to finally talk to Elijah, Bennett stared down at his screen.
How exactly was he going to write this? Should he even write a message?
Maybe I should leave a voicemail instead, he thought, but quickly scrapped the idea. No, I’m already having a hard-enough time trying to apologize through a text. What if he picks up?
The thought made Bennett’s stomach churn. No, a text message would do fine. And if Elijah ever did reply, at least Bennett could take the time to construct a proper reply. The vampire would just have to be patient, while Bennett tried to find the right words.
The little keyboard slid up the screen and the little, blinking vertical line showed Bennett that his phone was ready for whatever message he was going to send. He looked down at the screen, but then up at the ceiling. And then, he looked back down, his thumbs poised right above the little buttons.
Dear Elijah…
“No, that’s too old-timey,” Bennett muttered, quickly erasing his message.
Hi, Elijah. It’s Bennett. Your mate.
“No, this is a bit too…confrontational,” Bennett said to himself, although there was this other side of his brain telling him that he was overthinking his words. There wasn’t anything confrontational about what he said. He was just nitpicking.
Bennett stared at his screen, scouring his mind for what exactly he wanted to say.
He sat up against the head of his bed and sighed. First of all, he needed to apologize. Then he needed to clear the air. At the very least, he needed to tell Elijah exactly how he felt, and maybe this was going to end up like a long letter. Was it perhaps better if he sent it sentence by sentence, or chunk by chunk?
Nobody liked reading big paragraphs, after all. Especially not when it was waxing poetic about feelings. Well, except maybe a reader with their author’s favorite book. Or if the paragraph was in a romance novel, then…maybe.
Even in Bennett’s half-anxious state, he had to grin at that.
Bennett took a deep breath. There was nothing else to do but to try, he supposed, and the more that he sat there worried about what to say, the more time he wasted just sitting there. He tapped on the little backspace, editing himself as he typed out his thoughts directly to this other man.
God, I hope this is the right number, Bennett thought.
Hi, Elijah. This is Bennett. You know, your mate. I just wanted to apologize for suddenly leaving you earlier. Honestly, I panicked.
Bennett tapped on the little arrow button that sent the message. Then he went about writing.
A little part of me doesn’t believe that this is real, but there’s no real reason to lie about mating, is there? And it’s not even because of you. For what it’s worth, I think you’re wonderful. I could even talk about how sometimes (and this is gonna sound creepy) I sneak looks at you because I think you’re what I think the perfect man should be.
God, I shouldn’t have said that. Now my palms are sweaty.
That was TMI, too. That’s still a thing, right? TMI for “too much information?”
Bennett paused. He saw that little icon, and a tiny gray message popped up just underneath his words. Seen.
Elijah was reading his messages as he wrote them.
Suddenly, that knot inside of Bennett’s stomach seemed to twist even harder. But he was already partway in—he needed to finish, even though suddenly every alarm in Bennett’s head rang in unison.
Bennett took a deep breath, and pushed past it. His thumbs were a bit more quivery when he typed up his next message. It took him a little longer, but he knew he had to soldier on.
Honestly, my problem is my own. I have a lot of issues that I don’t know how to handle yet. Some of them are a bit too much to share over a simple text message.
Bennett sighed. This was…a lot to take in by one person. This was definitely a lot to process, and there was this voice inside his head telling him that Elijah was going to quit on him. Could vampires break their mating bond, even when it hadn’t been consummated yet? If so, then Elijah would. The man didn’t sign up for this.
But finally, Bennett continued.
I’m not where I want to be, is what I’m trying to say. But if you’re willing to have me, knowing I’m a work in progress…
I want to see where things might go with you, too.
Before Bennett could even put his phone down, it gave a little ring and vibrated in his hand. The message that stared him right back was simple—one sentence that made the knot in Bennett’s twist even more tightly. So much so that it actually made Bennett’s breath hitch.
Can I call you?
One sentence was enough to make Bennett’s body quiver. It took the warlock a moment to collect himself before he answered—one simple word that, if he thought about it, could alter the course of his life…maybe forever.
Sure.
It didn’t take but five seconds for his phone to ring, and Bennett brought the phone up, shakily, to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
Through the phone and directly into his ear, there was something different about Elijah’s voice. It was something that felt weirdly reassuring to Bennett in a way that he’d never felt before. The knot inside Bennett’s stomach actually untwisted, and it felt like he could breathe again. “Hi,” Bennett replied, exhaling deeply. “I’m…really sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Elijah was quick to say. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“Mm, I think I do,” Bennett said. “I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been two hours since I left you downstairs.”
“Well, I guess you could apologize for that,” Elijah said after a moment. “But seriously, I get it now. I didn’t earlier, but reading your message helped clear things up a little bit. I just wanted to call you to make sure you were okay, and so that I could talk to you and tell you something without anything getting lost in translation.”
Bennett couldn’t help the smile that slowly spread over his face. He leaned back in his bed, and actually covered his mouth as though someone could see the expression on his face. “I’m fine,” he said softly. “What did you want to tell me?”
“I like you, Bennett,” Elijah said. “That’s not just because we’re mated, either. I want to make this mating work, that’s true, but I also want to get to know you better. This is all new to me too and I have to admit that I’m a little bit scared.”
The warlock tilted his head. He furrowed his eyebrows. “Scared? Why?”
Elijah chuckled. It was a soft, but deep sound—the baritone of his voice rang clearly through the phone—and it made Bennett want to lean in and listen to every sound that the vampire made. Bennett knew that not all vampires were the same, but he was still surprised at how seductive Elijah was when compared to other people. There was just this quality that Bennett couldn’t quite place.
Maybe it was the fact that they were mates.
“Putting yourself out there is always scary, isn’t it?” Elijah asked, though the question seemed rhetorical to Bennett. The way the vampire’s voice softened slightly conveyed the hurt E
lijah was feeling to Bennett, and it made the warlock’s chest tighten.
Then again, maybe Bennett was overthinking it.
On the other hand, it could have been the beginnings of that mating bond people with mates liked to talk about.
Bennett didn’t know how to apologize enough for hurting someone with his instinct to flee at the slightest bit of irrational fear. It was made even worse by the fact that even if his emotions didn’t let him fully believe that Elijah was his mate, his mind still told him that there was no reason Elijah would be lying.
Elijah was, with some form of certainty, bound to him in some irrevocable way. Maybe he could cast a spell, or borrow Miss Ifi’s magic eyes to see if the strings of their fate were wound together. But that was a moot point. Bennett still hurt Elijah’s feelings.
And honestly, Bennett didn’t like that he did that.
“I’ve always thought of mating as being about all these grand gestures. I’ve seen big declarations of love, like flash mob dance proposals or fireworks shows at amusement parks. The whole shebang, you know? But I guess that’s just one way of expressing things,” Elijah replied. “But there’s the other side, too. The side that actually matters, because it’s not about big declarations or fancy, planned surprises. It’s just about the day-to-day stuff. Today, I think I went about it all wrong. If I could do it over, I’d want to start by making sure I wasn’t staring at you from afar. I’d actually be a part of your life, and try to do it properly. Maybe actually ask you out, instead of expecting you to be suddenly okay with being mated to me.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t hate the idea of being your mate,” Bennett said. “In fact, I think that it would be nice. I’m warming up to it. It’s just—”
“—You’re going through some stuff. I know,” Elijah filled in helpfully. “And that’s putting it mildly.”
Bennett felt his smile falter a little, but he knew it to be true. “You’re right,” he replied. “It’s just been a lot, to say the least. And I’m really sorry about all that.”
